


Soulmarks

by TheBeckster



Category: Jak and Daxter
Genre: Gen, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, can be read as gen or shippy, rated for mild language, time travel can be fun to play with if you don't think too hard, whatever floats your boat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:49:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25139518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBeckster/pseuds/TheBeckster
Summary: Jak's soulmark had always puzzled him. Daxter's had always frustrated him. It only took saving the world a couple times for them to actually realize what they meant.
Relationships: Daxter & Jak, Daxter/Jak
Comments: 6
Kudos: 73





	Soulmarks

**Author's Note:**

> I forgot I ever wrote this until I was poking through my writing folder in search of anything to help my writer's block. I think I did this like a year ago. If I recall correctly, I was just thinking about the idea of the first words your soulmate says to you appearing on your body once they said them, and at the same time I was replaying the J&D games, and since Daxter has such unique first words to Jak my brain said "lol what if" and here we are.
> 
> I barely proofread this thing, be gentle if there are stupid typos or grammatical mistakes.

Jak's soulmark had always puzzled him. The words crawled across the curve of his ribs and around his back so he could never read the whole thing without a mirror or help.

Like most children, he and his friends took turns speaking their words aloud. Secretly hoping it might spark a reaction, but knowing full well that a soulmark was the first words your soulmate spoke to you. And once they appeared, there was nothing else to it.

Except they weren't supposed to show up _until_ you met your soulmate.

And Jak was one hundred percent certain that nobody had said such an odd string of words to him ever in his life.

But the soulmark didn't lie. At some point in his life, Jak had run into his soulmate.

At least he wasn't alone.

Daxter had too, apparently, though the other boy was in the same boat as Jak, with the added detriment of his soulmark being perhaps the most common word ever spoken in greeting.

“Hello.”

The word was scrawled across his right palm in shaky letters, looking like a child had written it. In fact, that was the reason why Daxter couldn't remember who his soulmate was either. He had been so young when it happened, and with being passed around between foster homes and caretakers it was months before anyone bothered to take a look at the words that didn't wash off, no matter how hard Daxter scrubbed, or how many dishes he washed.

To the older boy's annoyance, it was Samos who finally explained it.

"You should have said something sooner, Daxter," the Sage snapped as he hovered at his bookshelf looking for something in particular. "I thought you were just drawing on yourself again."

"Well I guess I just love washing things," Daxter muttered mutinously.

On either side of him, Jak and Keira giggled quietly. His best friend signed a teasing remark back.

"Why you!" Daxter gasped in mock annoyance, swatting at Jak's hands. "I should make you eat sand for that."

The boys laughed and broke into a mini wrestling match until Samos found the book he was looking for.

"Knock it off, Daxter!" The Sage barked.

Jak fell angelically still, with his hands folded in his lap. Keira was holding her giggles in behind her cupped hands. Daxter reluctantly folded his hands in his lap as well, but shot a cross-eyed, tongue-out look to Jak as soon as Samos's gaze was averted to the book.

The book itself wasn't all that interesting. Just a fairy tale picture book they'd all read a thousand times, but it had to do with soulmarks and it was a good launching point for Samos' lecture.

Keira was the only one of the trio to not have her soulmark yet – something the boys often held over her and teased her about. But they were young. What did they care about soulmates and falling in love?

But then they got older. And the thought of boyfriends and girlfriends and crushes suddenly became very serious business. Keira still never got her mark, even if she spent a lot of time hanging around the docks, and chatting up the young ship hands and apprentice merchants who came and left with the tides.

Daxter began to resent his mark. "Hello." How stupider and vaguer could a soulmark get? He decided that such an unremarkable soulmark meant that he probably wasn't ever going to end up with his true soulmate. He decided it was a free pass. He flirted with anyone with a pulse. He started wearing gloves to cover the telltale word on his palm. Girls thought he was cheating if he had a visible mark and still tried flirting with them.

And Jak remained just as puzzled about his mark as ever. He listened intently, and went about his usual life, hoping to one day meet the person who would actually say that weird string of words. But he also didn't see the need to go hunting down his soulmate either. With Daxter and Keira for companionship, what else could he need?

And then there was the accident on Misty Island. Daxter's soulmark disappeared underneath a layer of dense fur – much to the newly turned Ottsel's relief. And in between battling lurkers, and testing new zoomer tech, and finding the other sages, and trying to reverse whatever had been done to Daxter, soulmarks completely slipped the minds of the teenagers. They had a world to save after all.

In the heady rush of victory, and light eco, and finding that strange craft atop the citadel, dating anyone fell to the wayside for everyone, even Daxter.

And then they opened the rift gate, and fell through the portal to another world. They were separated. Jak was imprisoned and tortured for two years. He has resigned himself to the same fate he'd seen others meet. Death by that experimental machine.

And the Daxter finally found him and broke him out and gave Jak his first real clothes to wear ever since that awful day with the rift gate. And Jak didn't care if they smelled a little musty or were a little dirty or felt a little rough and itchy against raw skin; they weren't prison rags so they might as well have been made of the finest linen and silk.

Then they were crawling through the Fortress, with Daxter balanced on his shoulder and whispering directions to freedom in his ear.

Jak barely had time to take his first breath of free air before an old man was stepping into his path and Jak was demanding answers.

Daxter hopped off his shoulder and said to the small boy who hovered anxiously around the old man's feet, "Ah, sorry, he's new to the whole conversation thing."

Jak was vaguely aware of an itch on his side as Kor explained Haven City. He didn't think anything of it. There were more pressing matters at hand, like the approaching Krimson Guard patrol.

And then things just never stopped. There was the Underground and revenge on Praxis and running missions for Krew, and finding Keira and Samos again.

Then metalheads invaded the city and Jak and Daxter had to ride off again to save the world. In all that time, Jak hadn't once thought about the words scrawled across his rib cage.

It wasn't until after his return from the metalhead nest; when Torn sent him and Daxter immediately off to the showers to wash off the blood and slime and Kor goo before they contaminated the whole base that Jak took notice.

He was standing under the stream of lukewarm water, trying to make some sense of the last few hours. Particularly the time travel bits... that little kid had actually been him. Which meant this was the time and the world he belonged in, was born in, and he didn't remember any of it. If only he had known on his first day of freedom from the Fortress when they met Kor... Kor who knew who Jak was from the beginning...

Jak dug his palms into the side of his head. If he tried to figure everything out in the shower, he'd use up the entire supply of water for the whole Underground.

Jak turned off the shower and stepped out. As he toweled off he could hear Daxter in the next stall, singing off-key but clearly in high spirits. Jak took a moment to look himself over in the cracked and dirty mirror, his skin was mottled with bruises, and littered with hastily scabbed over cuts. The last tinges of green eco from the few med packs he'd been able to scavenge still lingered on the most recent ones. Jak poked at a particularly nasty bruise on his ribs, knowing from the pain he'd probably cracked a rib or two underneath. Then he looked at the words he had memorized a lifetime ago. Words he couldn't remember not being without.

The first few words of the sentence were around his back, the middle of the phrase was covered in bruises, but he underlined the last two words with his finger.

"Conversation thing." They said.

"Holy shit... Daxter!"

"What?" The ottsel called in the midst of his fifth shampoo.

"My words!"

"What about 'em?"

But Jak wasn't entirely sure what to say about them.

"Jak?" The other shower turned off, there was the sound of water splattering everywhere, and Daxter appeared with a towel wrapped around him. "What about your words?"

"What are they?"

"You know them better than I do, buddy." Daxter crossed his arms, but said obligingly. " _Ah, sorry, he's new to the whole conversation thing_."

Daxter's jaw dropped as soon as he finished. "But... I said that to the kid."

"I know, Dax. You said it to me."

"But, but then..." Daxter looked at his right hand. While his fur was wet, he could almost make out the word written into his skin. Just a simple, clumsy child's "hello."

"But you didn't say it to me..." Daxter trailed off, trying not to feel disappointed. It was rare, but not unheard of for soulmarks to belong to different people.

"But I did, Dax. I just didn't speak it."

Jak raised his right hand and waved, small and shy like he had the first time they’d met in Sandover.


End file.
